


Study Hall

by diefacingourfoes



Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, not very shippy i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefacingourfoes/pseuds/diefacingourfoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Screw the biology. Moritz was looking at him like he was some kind of god, and, for whatever reason, Melchior really wanted this kid to like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Study Hall

Melchior had no opinion about study hall. 

A lot of the kids in his school liked to complain about it: the no phones rule was unfair, the rule that said you had to read for thirty minutes of it instead of doing homework was unfair, and how dare they not let the students leave the room and wander around the hallways doing whatever during that time period. But the rules didn’t seem to affect Melchior all that much: he didn’t like to walk around aimlessly, he usually had something to read, and he could get away with checking his phone occasionally as long as he wasn’t using the entire time. Melchior’s main complaint about his study hall was that none of his friends were in it, but even that wasn’t that bad. 

He was working on his biology notes. Bio wasn’t exactly a quick study, but it was somewhat enjoyable, and he grasped the concepts pretty easily. Generally, he liked to finish the notes in study hall so he wouldn’t have to work on them when he got home, but that day the teacher had assigned more sections than usual, and Melchior was deep in focus in an attempt to do the notes quickly while still making sure that he mostly understood the material. NADH molecules make up sixteen percent of the energy harvested in cellular respiration, but their energy can’t be used until-

Someone was singing.

Melchior slowly lifted his head up from his notebook. It wasn’t singing, exactly, more of a combination of mumbling and humming. Whatever it was, it was irritating. If he wasn’t allowed to talk about the 2016 presidential election in study, then this person shouldn’t be allowed to sing and disrupt everyone’s thought process.

Melchior eyed the teacher, hoping that he had noticed something, but he was completely engrossed in whatever was on his laptop screen. Great. He would have to tell the kid to shut up himself, and that would make him look bad.

He scanned the room, and eventually located the source of the noise to be the desk behind him. The kid was wearing a large pair of headphones while attacking a worksheet already covered in cross outs and erase marks. 

Melchior softened slightly. He had taken notice of this kid before. He always worked throughout the period, glaring at his homework the whole time and frequently tapping his hand on the desk while jiggling his foot intensely. Melchior had tried to help him once, then saw the teacher looking his way and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Melchior picked up his chair and turned it so it faced the desk behind him. A couple people glanced up, but not the kid with the headphones. Melchior waved his hand in front of the kid’s homework paper, and he looked up.

He seemed startled, but took off his headphones and looked at Melchior nervously. He started to say something, then stopped.

“Hi,” said Melchior. 

The kid was still looking at him like he was some kind of large shark. “Hi.”

Melchior pointed to the kid’s headphones with his mechanical pencil. “You were singing.”

“What?”

“Before,” said Melchior. “You were kind of mumbling along to your music. It was distracting.”

“Oh!” said the kid. “I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

Melchior waited for him to finish the sentence, then realized he wasn’t going to. “That’s fine,” he said. “Just thought I’d tell you.”

The kid nodded. He seemed to be waiting for Melchior to turn back around. But he wasn’t done yet.

He held out his hand. “I’m Melchior,” he said. “Gabor.”

“I know who you are.”

“Most people do.”

The boy nodded. Melchior waited. “Oh! Uh- Moritz. I’m Moritz.” He shook Melchior’s hand, a little too enthusiastically. Melchior suppressed a smile.

He gestured to Moritz’s paper. “Need some help with that?”

Moritz frowned when he pointed it out, as if he had just remembered it was there. “Yeah. Kinda.”

“It’s just-“ Moritz waved his hand in the air meaninglessly. “I just don’t really do math.”

Melchior nodded. He looked back at the teacher, and when he had decided he was sufficiently zoned out, he wheeled his chair around the table and next to Moritz. 

Moritz still looked somewhat wary, but seemed willing enough to accept the offer of help. He gestured at the paper. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re going to have to be a bit more specific than that.” He looked at the paper. It was a bunch of those proofs where you have to prove that the triangles are congruent. Pretty basic stuff. Melchior had done it last year. 

Moritz was gripping the pencil like it was a lifeline, his knuckles white. His entire hand was covered in lead, as if he had been lying flat against the paper while he wrote. Melchior found himself consumed with the strange urge to reach out and touch it.

Melchior metaphorically shook his head to clear his mind. “What don’t you understand?” He sounded like a teacher, he realized. Moritz was going to think he was patronizing him. 

He didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know!” he said. “I think I understand it, and then I try to do a problem, and there’s just not enough information there to prove it. And then the teacher shows me how to do that one, and I get it, and then I go to do another one and I’m completely lost.” He stopped abruptly. 

Melchior angled the paper towards himself and eased the pencil out of Moritz’s hand, brushing his fingers against the other boy’s, slightly. He gave Moritz a reassuring smile.

“These worksheets like to trick you,” he said. “It’s never like the problems in the books. You have to think outside the box to get the information. Like, here, you already said these two angles are congruent because of the Vertical Angles Theorem, and this side is congruent to itself.”

Moritz nodded. “But that’s not enough.”

“Right,” said Melchior. “But see, you can also prove these sides are congruent. You just need another step.” He scribbled the work on the already messy sheet, and Moritz watched him, rapt. “Get it?”

“When you do it, sure. But then the next problem’s going to be completely different and I won’t get it at all.”

Melchior smiled a little, to himself. It was a fair comment. Math books kind of tried to make you fail. 

“Want me to do it for you?” Melchior shot him a smile that was supposed to be charming.

“Really?”

“Yeah, why not.” Melchior took his paper. “You’ll have to copy over the work so it’s in your handwriting, though.”

“Are- are you sure?” Moritz looked like someone had just handed him a million dollars.

“Yeah,” said Melchior. He was already scribbling down the answer to the second problem on a separate sheet of paper. “I don’t have anything better to do, anyway.”

Screw the biology. Moritz was looking at him like he was some kind of god, and, for whatever reason, Melchior really wanted this kid to like him. 

He worked silently, checking over each problem after he did it. Moritz had dragged his chair even closer than it already was to watch him, and his proximity was only distracting Melchior a little. He finished in around 25 minutes.

“Done,” said Melchior. He handed the paper and his answers back to Moritz, flashing him a smile.

“Thank you so much, oh my god.” 

“You still need to understand the material, though.” Moritz’s face fell. “I’m glad to help on this one worksheet, but for the test…”

“I know,” said Moritz. He bit his lip. “I was hoping I could come in for some extra help or something, but the teacher always gets irritated at me when I don’t understand stuff.”

“Teachers suck,” said Melchior. “I’ll help you. Give me your number and we can meet up at my house, or in the library or something.”

Moritz’s expression was wary. “That’d be great, but…why are you doing this?”

“I like you. You’re cool.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” Melchior spun his chair so he was facing Moritz. He arched an eyebrow.

“Melchior Gabor wants to be friends with me? “

Melchior thought about making a “whoa, I never said I wanted to be friends” joke, but he didn’t think Moritz would take that well. Instead, he just nodded. “Yeah.”

“But you’re like the most popular kid in school!” Moritz was talking kind of loudly, and gesticulating wildly. A few people were looking at them.

“Shh,” said Melchior. “We’ll get in trouble if the teacher sees us talking.”

Moritz glanced over at the teacher, then lowered his voice. “I just don’t get it.”

“Moritz,” Melchior said. He had read somewhere that people respond better when you say their name a lot. “Why wouldn’t I want to be friends with you? Why are you so down on yourself?”

Moritz shrugged, and let himself slump into his chair. “I don’t know.”

Melchior put his hand on Moritz’s arm. Moritz didn’t seem to notice. “Let me help you with math, Moritz.”

Moritz nodded. “Ok.”

Melchior picked up his phone, unlocked it, and handed it to Moritz. Moritz glanced at him nervously, punched in a few numbers, then handed it back to him.

Melchior’s hand was still on his arm. He decided to see how long he could leave it there without Moritz saying something. 

“I’ll text you.”

Moritz didn’t say anything, but he smiled a little bit. Which was encouraging. 

They sat there for a moment in silence, then Moritz returned to copying down Melchior’s work. Melchior wheeled back to his seat and continued to work on the biology notes, which he was not going to finish before study hall ended in twenty minutes. 

Whatever. There were things more important than NADH molecules.

**Author's Note:**

> Melchior is that asshole that takes the teacher's revolving chair while everyone else has to sit in those terrible plastic ones. I am also that asshole.


End file.
